What Is the Cost of Raising a Child in the US

The process that a little child become bigger and bigger and finally grow up is so much amazing, but the cost of raising a child in the US isn’t a small thing. So how much to raise a child is the biggest problem in this world.

Toddler sitting on stacks of money

U.S. is one of the biggest industrial country in this world, so something like steel pipes will appear is just to make this world better, but at the same time, it brings a lot of troubles, and one of the biggest troubles is the cost of raising a child in the US.

Every family knows that there is a big trouble that raising a child can put a strain on family finances, but when you see the total cost, you will be shocked.

According to the report of “Cost of Raising A Child In The US” which is the latest annual from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, if you have a child who was born in 2013 up until age 18 in a middle-income family in the U.S., the cost of raising he or she will be about $245,340, under the adjustment for projected inflation, the cost will also be $304,480, which is 1.8 percent higher than the previous year.

In the Northeast, families in urban areas such as New York and Boston, the cost of university tuition and home prices are even more, like an average of $253,770, or roughly $14,000 a year, according to a report by the Department of Agriculture, the housing and child-care costs will be higher in the future.

If you are a family that have two parents and the annual income is between $61,530 and $106,540, the cost of raising a child a year will be roughly $12,800 – $14,970. The annual cost will be changed every year depends on factors such as the child’s age, the number of children in the family and the family’s income and location.

When you want to plan for the future, it couldn’t be better to have as much information as possible with today’s economy. The report is a critical resource about determining child support guidelines and foster care payments for state governments as well as giving families with children an indication of expenses they might want to be prepared for, which is said USDA Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Under Secretary Kevin Concannon.

Housing is the top expense of the cost of raising a child in the US which is also the biggest problem among the parents. It will cost about $73,600 which is about 30 percent of the total cost of raising a child in the US. The second are child care and education which is about 18 percent and food which is about 16 percent, all this also consider the transportation, health care, clothing and miscellaneous expenses, but after age 18, the cost of college, pregnancy or other expenses were not factored in.

There was a report in 1960 which was estimated by the USDA’s first “Cost of Raising A Child”, and the overall cost is a good deal higher than that. This report said that $25,230 was the cost of raising a child in a middle-income family until the age of 18, but the truth is $198,560 in 2013 dollars. Health care expenses for a child have doubled, and during that time, the percentage of total child-rearing costs have also increased.

As what the data tell us, the older the children they are, the more expensive the cost they pay. On infants, parents will cost about an average of $12,680 a year, but in the 15- to 17-year-olds, it will be $13,900 a year.

An economist at the Agriculture Department’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, Mark Lino said, the most expensive group is the teenager, because they will eat more in this age, the food costs and transportation costs will be higher. Besides, at this age, they start to drive, the cost of insurance or a car will be necessary.

With the development of industry in this world, more and more industrial products come out, like steel pipes, these kind of products aim to improve the quality of human’s life, however, the quality of people’s life has been improved, the cost of raising a child is also “improved”. How much to raise a child is become the biggest problem in today’s world. Our society is improving, and the cost of raising a child in the US is increasing.

As what they report, American children is reducing, the number of babies born that is the U.S. fertility rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 last year which fell to its lowest point on record. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 122.9 births per 1,000 women in 1957 is a peak of the U.S. fertility rate, but in 2016, there were 59.7 births per 1,000 women during the first three months, which reduced significantly.

Indirect costs of having children are not included in this study, for example, forgone income from parents who scale back at work or quit their jobs entirely, and these costs will be more than they spend on housing, education, transportation and other necessities.

As what is mentioned above, there are more and more things we need to care about the cost of raising a child. Of course, raising a child is a great mission, but what it costs is not a small thing. How much to raise a child is still the biggest problem in this world, and with the development of economy and human-being, to raise a child is more and more difficult. But as the parents, no matter how much they will cost, the most important thing is to raise their children to be a man, a real man.